British Survivor Regrets Missing Funerals for 38 WTC Colleagues

Janice Brooks will never forgive herself for attending only 23 funerals among her 61 deceased colleagues at the World Trade Center. The British survivor says her heart remains broken twenty-five years later. She arrived in New York City just nineteen days before the attacks to work as an executive assistant for Euro Brokers.

On September 11, 2001, she became one of thousands caught up in the deadliest act of terrorism in history. Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial US passenger planes that day. Two were flown directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Decimating offices where this east Londoner was based, they destroyed her workplace instantly.

A third plane crashed into the Pentagon just outside Washington DC while a fourth fell in rural Pennsylvania after passengers overcame the hijackers. The intended target of that last plane is thought to have been the White House. Some 2,977 victims died on that day including sixty-one of Janice's colleagues.

Miraculously she managed to escape from the 84th floor of the South Tower. Her survival seems impossible given she had been evacuating her building moments after American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. Officials told her to head back in because too many people gathered on the plaza below during that chaotic moment.

As she climbed back up the stairwell United Airlines Flight 175 struck her building and annihilated the floors occupied by her firm. She was just metres below where the tragic plane burst through the structure and erupted into a fireball. Scenes of horror engulfed her as she saw scores of men and women wounded by the blast before enduring a fearful descent down the tower as it burned.

I can close my eyes and be back there in a second revealed Janice who has since returned to the UK. Now retired she serves as a guest speaker for UK-based charity Since 9/11 going into schools to share her experiences with young people and help educate them about extremism and tolerance. She hopes the next generation will never forget these events noting there are no schoolchildren today who were alive at the time of the attacks.

Casting her mind back Janice said she arrived early into the Euro Broker offices and noticed beautiful blue skies over Manhattan that morning. But serenity was soon shattered as she sat typing away on her computer when a deafening boom shook the building. She did not know a Boeing 767 jet had just struck the North Tower at that exact moment.

She told the Daily Mail she looked up and saw paper and dust swirling out of the window. New York much like London at the time had lots of construction work going on so she became used to bangs and crashes during her nearly three weeks there. No one ever took any notice but this one was particularly loud. She went back to her desk carried on with her work totally unaware of what was happening until a man shouted at the top of his lungs telling everybody out.

Everybody out!" That is what Janice heard echoing through the stairwell on that terrible morning in 2001. She will never forgive herself for attending only twenty-three funerals later in life because her heart remains broken even now, twenty-five years after the dust settled. A dress shirt with silver cufflinks she wore that day, covered in dust, dirt, and the blood of others, has since been donated to the 9/11 Museum in New York.

Janice did not know why a plane hit the building yet calmly picked up her bag to call her boss who had flown to London the day before. He was not available so she spoke instead to Rob, her former UK manager. He screamed at her down the phone saying f****** hell Janice a planes gone into the building get the f*** out of there. His voice was full of shock and horror as he described that kind of scream while watching it on television from 3,500 miles away.

Realizing the urgency of the situation she began running towards the exit. She met three colleagues named Dan Dominic and Brian who tried to reassure her it would be safe to stay because only the building next to them had been hit. But two fire marshals Steve and Jose actively herded her towards the stairs instead. My decision to stay or go was completely taken out of my hands said Janice acknowledging those few seconds determined whether she would live or die.

Walking down the stairwell she recalled most people had no panic and no concern unlike the thousands of workers at the North Tower who were frantically scrambling towards the exits. There were so many people amassing on the plaza that officials forced workers in her tower not to evacuate but instead return to their desks because the building was stable. By this point Janice had walked from the 84th floor down to the 70th floor while her colleagues Paul and Bobby standing a short distance away decided they would go back up the stairs.

Paul and Bobby took off almost running she recalled shouting out Hey wait for me before smiling he waved and said Come on old woman then they turned into the staircase and I would never see them again. At 903am just seventeen minutes after the North Tower was struck Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower hitting floors seventy-seven through to eighty-five. Janice climbing slower than her colleagues had reached the seventy-sixth floor very narrowly missing the carnage unfurling on the floors above her now in a group of around ten people she recalled hearing a huge explosion.

The lights flickered on and off while a couple of the girls in front fell to the floor screaming as she was jostled back against the wall. She could see like dust and stuff coming down from the ceiling even though in her mind she was there for at least two hours reality probably meant it was not even five minutes. The building stopped moving and the lights eventually came back on while the girls got up they dusted each other down and everyone was OK. Bob a guy from Euro Brokers that I had been with and a man with a white shirt came running past me starting to pull away all the debris from the door we had just walked through.

I was about three steps into that corridor when they opened the door and I peered over their shoulders seeing only darkness and flames because the stairs had gone. Suddenly she heard this woman screaming out Somebody help over and over while there was banging and the door was shaking until two men who had cleared debris previously made their way to the door at the opposite end of the corridor. As it opened the first person through was a lady with her arm neatly cut from her shoulder to her elbow and flesh flapping down so she could see the bone. As she moved blood was going everywhere while one of the guys had a gym bag ready for use.

They fashioned a makeshift sling from a T-shirt for her injuries. The next man through had massive shards of glass embedded in his chest that everyone was pulling out. Another victim had blood and glass covering his entire back. Others arrived with cuts across their faces, coated in dust. The last person to emerge was the screaming lady. Her cries had gone on for so long. "I can't see, I can't see," she kept saying. She had a cut on her head that bled down into her eyes. A kind man carrying a gym bag found a bottle of water and helped clean her up. She had long dark hair, and as she shook her head, glass and dust flew everywhere.

The group explained how a fireball blasted toward them in the stairwell while glass windows shattered around them into deadly shards. Janice felt horror at the thought that one stairwell erupted into flames while the other blew apart. She feared there would be no way out. Amazingly, the group found a third door leading to a utility stairwell. For agonizing minutes, Janice stepped slowly downwards alongside the walking wounded. She had removed her high heels by now. She noticed the woman whose arm was slashed was also bleeding from her foot, with several toes severed. Janice recalled walking in her own bloody footprints as they descended.

She remained physically unharmed, but what she saw took a heavy emotional toll. I happened to glance down at my shirt and it was covered in blood. Lots of blood, all zigzagging, all over. I just stood there pulling my shirt away from me and crying out, "I've got blood on my shirt. I've got blood on my shirt." My colleague Bob came running up and held me by the shoulders really tightly. He said, "It's not your blood. We have to keep moving. We have to get out of here." Those words gave them strength. Janice and the rest finally made it to ground level. Bob even carried the woman with the wounded arm down the final ten floors when she could no longer continue. Several firefighters, police officers, and Port Authority workers were scrambling back into the building as they exited. The structure they tried so hard to escape was filled with heroes like them.

Once outside, police directed Janice toward the Brooklyn Bridge. "Don't look up, don't look back," they warned. But she wanted to head home to her apartment, just a ten-minute walk away from the Towers. As they walked around the corner, she looked up at the buildings for the first time. Where their floor should have been, there was a huge gaping hole instead. She described horror at realizing the thwacking noises were desperate office workers throwing themselves to the ground. Janice thought the worst might be over as she returned home. Minutes later, she watched the South Tower fall before her very eyes. A dust plume surged over Lower Manhattan, with debris even entering her building. She recalled being in a daze and not understanding what was happening. I don't know what the gates of hell sound like when they open, but I'm pretty sure this was it. There was a roaring sound that went on for ages, then bang, bang, bang. She understood later that these were all the floors hitting each other as they fell down. She became aware her building was starting to move. The windows hummed, and crockery in the dishwasher rattled.

A massive cloud of black smoke began swirling around her windows one moment, then everything went pitch dark inside. Janice could not even see her own hand before her face as she sat on the sofa rocking back and forth. She felt certain death was coming right then. The next few hours meant wading knee-deep through debris in her building and walking dusty streets toward Queens to stay with a colleague. Strangers helped her onto the subway so she could reach safety. Janice remembers their faces blurring over time, yet she thanks every single one of them for getting her there. On that day of horror, she witnessed the very best of humanity and New York. She still prays for those strangers every night without fail.

Euro Brokers moved to a temporary office in Midtown while Janice manned a helpline for families of missing staff members. The list started with 80 names before shrinking down to just 60 people. Phones rang nonstop as desperate voices filled the room, often with no good news to offer anyone. A colleague named John survived initial burns but later died, bringing the death toll to 61 people total. Directors asked her to attend funerals she could make it to, though trauma and logistics made this nearly impossible. Some days saw three or four burials happening at once. Even now, she cannot forgive herself for missing so many of them.

She admits with deep shame that she only attended 23 out of the 61 funerals held. Janice feels she let families down and failed her own sense of duty on that terrible day. That burden will stay with her until the end of her life, a guilt she refuses to shake off. Twenty-five years have passed, yet memories remain sharp and pain still hurts. She is incredibly lucky to breathe today when others did not survive. Janice plans to visit the 911 Memorial this Friday while keeping a small vial of dust from her apartment in her bedroom drawers. When mood hits low, she pulls out that little container to remember how many amazing people helped her survive. Someone was definitely looking after her on September 11, 2001. She has nothing left to complain about since sixty-one others would swap places with her instantly. Gratitude and humility define her view now because that tragedy was not her day to face.